Interest List #3
Meghann Stephenson at Half Gallery, Henni Alftan at Karma, John Kacere, at Gratin, In Praise of Shadows
Welcome to my Interest List, a monthly rundown of all the art I would inquire about if I was in the market to buy.
It is December. The last three months of the year always collapse into each other and dissipate into memories like waves. It’s the same crescendo each year but the impact varies depending on where the currents of life lead us. Seasonally specific holidays delineate this intangible, gripless period of time, as do the memories borne out of celebrations or the choice to stay at home. During the proper Halloween weekend (October 26th & 27th) I was recovering from my double dose of inoculations for COVID and the flu because I simply don’t have time to be sick the remainder of the year or into the early dawn of 2025, nor do I want to spend the most wonderful time of year fixed under a blanket in misery. Sacrificing my health for Halloween seemed appropriate. Last weekend, I gave thanks to my mind for being programmed the way it is as my piece about fashion designers looking to interiors for inspiration was published for Architectural Digest, read it here. I love the way I see the world and how my perspective continues to change shape as I get older. This week, on the 12th, I turn 32. Nothing could be more perfect for me than my birthday occurring during the twilight of the year. I relish in thematic festivities, but also, as the year comes to an end I take stock of where life has moved in the previous 11 months and my day to draft my map of where I’d like to go. Regardless of where the path will actually lead, I already know I’ll be looking at art and noting all the things that bring me joy.
Here are the exhibitions that put a smile on my face recently:
Meghann Stephenson: Swan Dive at Half Gallery
A pale pink dress with the half-moon edge of brown hair scalloping the young girl’s back as her fingers are crossed, hoping for a wish we do not know. When I walked into the tiny annex space that hosted Stephenson’s debut with the gallery, my eyes gravitated to this painting because it called to mind Domenico Gnoli’s famous, similar compositions. However, his renderings are more vague in that each “figure” is nearly anonymous aside from the styling of their hair and what they decided to wear that day. In this body of work, Stephenson asks the viewer “Who gets to self-destruct, and is that always a bad thing?” and “Why be a cut tulip when you could be a weed, still alive, breaking through the cracks.” Now these are questions worth considering as I mull over my yearly life renewal. There were points throughout this year where I have felt like the Swan, rendered in perfect precision akin to the Dutch masters, outwardly refined and inwardly losing stem. And yet I managed a swift upturn to the sky. I have been a flower sliced at the stem, but my stubborn shrubbyness helps me hold my place in the cracked concrete. Hands are said to reveal one's age and I happen to love the way that time stands still in how they are rendered in these works. They’ll age but are more resistant to time than their corporal counterparts. While observing the piece featuring a hand loosening its grip on a strand of pearls, the gallery attendant mentioned that the beads spell out the work’s title, The End, in Morse code. As the pearls roll off of the black cloth and into the unknown, I imagine that they find a new life in the form of a refreshed necklace or string that would be affixed onto a handbag. The ending of things tastes bitter at the beginning, but more often than not adds depth to the flavor profile of life.
Henni Alftan: Stop Making Sense at Karma
Inaugurating the East Village stalwart gallery’s new location in Chelsea (don’t worry the EV locations are safe and sound where they’ve always been), is a show by one of my favorite contemporary painters: Henni Alftan. The Art Historian in me wants to place a title on the flatness favored by painters working today. I examine the paintings while tapping my chin with my index finger wondering about the relationship to the works that came before it. But Alftan is in a league of her own. I find her work more akin to the impressionists (not in the way she handles paint of course), in that she captures brief moments in time, slices of life that were managed to be imprinted on canvas in time for them to live on forever, longer than they imagined they would go on to exist for. Nitty-gritty details are softened, and we are left viewing the glowing windows of a building, the perspective of a rearview mirror, and the overflowing bathtub in timeless satin-smooth areas of color that provide us with just enough detail. The narrative of the scene is to be written in your mind. Is the jubilant fireworks celebrating the 4th of July or New Year's Eve? Is the hand clutching the black and white grid-printed coat staving off a winter chill or a springtime breeze? One of the paintings I was most taken with was the stairway I felt I could walk into that was framed by a curtain of beads. Know that I will be keeping a watchful eye on this beloved decorative element to see if it has a due reemergence in the coming year.
John Kacere: Butt Can You Feel It? at Gratin
Lost in Translation is my favorite Sofia Coppola film in regards to the interpersonal semi-romantic dance between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. I’ve had quite a few unrequited, yet nevertheless clicked connections in my life, so the story fits into a uniquely shaped pocket in my heart. Famously, the film opens with a view of Johansson’s sheer-pinky nude-clad underwear bum laying sideways on fresh white hotel-grade sheets. Last year, on the occasion of the film’s 20th Anniversary she told Rolling Stone that the shot was based on the work of John Kacere:
His oeuvre is filled with lingerie-clad bums rendered in a photorealistic style. Although the subject is sexual, I see them as excellent studies in rendering fabric. The folds as it falls around the body, the ability to close to completely accurately capture the highlights on the skin and its tone beneath a whisper of lavender fabric, are studies in how to paint! I crave witnessing techniques of this caliber, which excites me the most about his work because not everyone can do this!
In Praise of Shadows at Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery
The commerce online is not commerce at all. I need to feel fabric with every groove in my palm. I need to see objects in person. Whenever I whip out a measuring tape to get a visual sense of how small or large an item I’m considering buying, I feel like a mime. The numbers on the tape do not register the solid dimensions in my mind. I cannot feel the empty box of air, it means nothing to me. Especially when it comes to home good to fit in my Polly Pocket-sized apartment! I’ve been wanting to upgrade my Target side table lamp I bought out of necessity for a very long time; however, every lamp that falls under the category of good or canonical design fails to give off the amount of light I need. I’ve been wearing glasses since grade 1 and my vision hasn’t gotten worse (shout out to carrots, I think) but I need a lamp for vision assistance, This show makes the case for multiple good-designed lamps in one space as both eye candy, art, and light from different angles. The impetus for this show was influenced by a 1933 essay written by the Japanese author Jun'ichirō Tanizaki’s about the importance of lighting the home and how illumination in our personal space affects our lives. I loved this explainer on the gallery’s website: “To light a room is not merely the act of toggling an electrical switch or drawing a curtain. A diverse range of textures, materials and surfaces allow for a myriad of articulations and utterances of light. As if exquisitely choreographed, a flickering candle elegantly dances upon the smooth, glossy finish of black lacquerware or the sinuous threads of an embroidered silk wallcovering. Through an artful practice of revealing and concealing, the room contains bold declarations and tacit secrets.” My home is filled with all kinds of literature. What can I say, if I want to write I need to read voraciously! I often joke with my friends that if the housing crisis in New York continues, I’ll probably be able to build an apartment with my books at some point (I would never do this because they would get so damaged). But, I could put my collection to good use, stacking books, copies of the Paris Review, and n +1 at different heights to accommodate a lil collection of good lamps that could also allow me to customize my desired lighting.
